


Confusion To The Enemy

by Arkada



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Ghost!Loki, Humor, Is it temporary character death if they come back as a ghost?, Warning: Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 05:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14325227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkada/pseuds/Arkada
Summary: Loki dies facing Thanos, but he doesn't let that keep him down for long.Now Thanos is facing a vengeful God of Chaos with an even bigger grudge than before, unrestricted by such annoyances as a physical body. The Avengers find themselves enjoying more than their fair share of good luck.





	Confusion To The Enemy

**Author's Note:**

> If I owned The Avengers, instead of having to save the universe in Infinity War, I would have them fight over nothing more than the last pina colada at the tropical resort.

**Thor**

Loki’s death is so final, so absolute, that Thor cannot believe he was fooled twice before. Loki’s fall from the Bifrost and his last breath on Svartalfheim both seem as false as his ridiculous play, now that Thor is staring at the real thing.

There is no mistaking the limp fall of his body from the Titan’s hand, or the bone-breaking angles he lies at. No mistaking the ghastly pallor of his flesh, or the way his Asgardian glamour finally fades to reveal Jotun skin he would never have willingly shown while he had a choice.

Loki is gone.

Above Thor, the Titan laughs, and extends a hand filled with power. Without Loki’s magic to fight back, the Tesseract is ripped from its hiding place easily, and flies from Loki’s body to Thanos.

Great fingers squeeze the cube and _crack_ it open with a ringing burst of light that throws Thor through the air. He hits the ground hard, the impact knocking the wind from him. He fights to rise again, and sees the Space Stone hovering - no, falling, falling from the rush of the cube breaking, hitting the ground at the Titan’s feet.

The Stone lands on a pointed rock and skitters to the side, impossibly fast, going and going until it meets the edge of the broken world and tumbles over.

Just like that.

Everything is still for a long, long second.

The Titan roars fury and lunges after it. The moment breaks with him, his creatures scrambling to follow, to form up and pursue it. Thor and Loki’s body both are ignored in the rush, and Thor crawls to reach him one last time.

_“Run, you idiot!”_

Thor freezes. The voice is Loki’s, unmistakably Loki’s, as clear as if he stood right beside Thor. But no-one else seems to have heard it, and the voice did not come from _beside_ Thor, or ahead or behind, but all at once as if spoken straight into his mind.

Trembling, he whispers, “Loki?”

_“I said run! I didn’t throw that stupid Stone in the void so you could cry over my corpse again!”_

Thor staggers to his feet and makes for the ship they came in. His body is filled with pain and they have lost the Space Stone to Thanos and Loki is _dead_ , but Thor is grinning like a madman as he makes his escape.

His brother has shunned the halls of Valhalla to save him, and they’re leaving together.

_Pulling back from Thor’s head, Loki sighs relief to himself. “That’s more like it.” He watches a little longer as Thor boards his ship and makes for Earth._

_Hm. Perhaps Thor’s allies could use a little help in defeating the Titan, too._

~

**Shuri**

She’s never felt so scared in her own lab before, and it makes her furious that they’ve done that. She’d been scared the last time, too, when Killmonger was here, but then she’d had Nakia with her, and nothing was going to get past Nakia. And they hadn’t known where she was.

But now the aliens are pounding on the doors with something strong enough to break down every vibranium structure in Wakanda, and Shuri’s trapped behind a single, empty workbench.

They’ve bored enough holes in the door that they’ll shoot her if she moves out from her shelter, but she’s completely unarmed over here. The worst part is that she can _see_ her favorite gauntlets, one on another bench about fifty feet away and the other in its proper case on the wall. But after dodging like a million laser bullets just to get down here, she’s not feeling good about her odds of surviving out there again.

She needs the gauntlets to be remotely controlled. Why did she never think to make them remotely controlled!?

The door blows in with enough noise to make Shuri’s head spin. Everything’s flying around the room and she’s thrown her arms up around her head, screaming in reflex. Which she stops as soon as she realizes she’s doing it, because ancestors save her, she’s not going down like _that_.

Heavy feet run into the room. Shuri gasps for breath and unfolds herself, and her hand hits something on the floor.

It’s her gauntlet.

_Both_ gauntlets.

Somehow the explosion at the door hurled them across the room, from opposite directions, to land perfectly in reach. Shuri doesn’t bother to calculate the specific odds of that happening as she shoves them on and charges them, but they’re pretty damn high.

Still, she’s not about to be ungrateful when there are alien invaders to kill. Gauntlets ready, she’s feeling loads better about this. It’s just like a video game, only _loads_ cooler!

They go down pretty easily now that she’s armed. They’re kinda stupid, and she knows where all the good hiding spots are. Sneaking from cover to cover and shooting them one by one only takes about thirty seconds. It’s simultaneously the fastest and slowest thirty seconds of her life.

Shuri stands up after taking out the last one, and surveys the lab. She can’t hear any more coming, and there are a couple of things here that will be useful, now that she has the time to grab them.

“Thank Bast,” she exhales, and runs to find an empty case to stuff her gear in.

_“Wrong deity,” Loki purrs, “but you’re welcome.”_

~

**Doctor Strange**

Being a superhero should not involve this much running. As soon as this is over, Stephen’s going to start a petition to ban it.

But they need to get Banner to Stark Tower, where his old lab has a few things that can help them. Nobody likes the idea of shoving the Hulk through a teleportation spell, and there’s too much debris in the streets to let them drive. So, very regrettably, running it is.

“Watch out!”

Stephen ducks, but it doesn’t help. The world spins, then slams to a stop. _Then_ the pain makes its appearance. He blinks back the haze around the edges, and he’s lying in the street with something pinning him down.

He is quite surprised to find himself alive, considering the rather large iron girder across his torso. It only takes a moment for the others to pull him free and up to his feet.

“Come on, we’ve gotta move!”

They keep going, Stephen’s chest aching but not enough to stop him running. His ribs are maybe fractured, but not broken. That girder could easily have been fatal… although, given Thor’s theory about their resident guardian trickster god, it could easily have missed him completely, too.

“Was that payback for dropping you in that portal?”

_Loki sneers at him. “No thanks for saving your life? Hm. See if the next one lands softly.”_

~

**Valkyrie**

“You need to find Sif, he said. It’ll be easy, he said. Well, fuck you, Your Majesty, and the hammer you flew in on.”

Brunnhilde drains her tankard and slams it to the sticky surface of the bar she was _told_ a certain black-haired, attractive Asgardian woman hangs out in. But she’s been here for three days so far and hasn’t seen a single attractive woman, never mind the particular one she’s after. Three days while Valhalla knows how much danger her friends are in. Not to mention that now’s probably not the best time to leave Thor alone, what with him babbling about his dead brother helping him escape the Titan. Brunnhilde’s not so sure Thor isn’t just seeing what he wants to see, but on the other hand… if anyone was going to stick around out of spite instead of accepting a glorious death in battle, it’d be Loki. Little shit. Still, it can’t be easy for Thor right now, but he reckons Sif knows where the Reality Stone is, so finding her is top priority.

But she’s clearly not here.

Brunnhilde gives the fuck up and shoves away from the bar, and that’s when some asshole decides to trip in front of her and spill his drink.

“Hey, watch it, bitch!”

She rolls her eyes and keeps moving. “Watch yourself, I’m busy.”

A hand grabs her shoulder and tries to spin her back around. Grinning, she lets it, then punches the offender right in the jaw and follows it with a knee to the gut. He drops, groaning, and Brunnhilde kicks him in the balls just for fun. The groans cut off into satisfyingly agonized silence, and Brunnhilde gets on her way only a few seconds delayed.

And it’s a good thing she was, because she practically bumps into Sif in the doorway.

There’s no mistaking that stunning profile, the warrior bearing, or the Asgardian armor under her cloak. Bloody _finally._

Brunnhilde pushes back her sleeve to reveal her Valkyrie tattoo, and Sif’s mouth falls open the second her gaze lands on it. “My lady-”

“No time for that,” Brunnhilde says. “There’s a lot of shit I need to tell you before you’ll be useful.” In support of her efforts, she grabs two new tankards from a server and steers them to a table. “Odin’s dead, Thor’s King, we blew up Asgard, some Titan called Thanos wants to destroy the universe, and you personally need to stop him, so drink up.”

And add to the list of crazy stuff going on, just maybe, Loki started a fight to keep Brunnhilde around until Sif appeared.

They definitely need to drink up.

_Loki laughs. “Well earned. But I still hate you.”_

~

**Ant Man**

Scott is out of his depth - very, very out of his depth. His Masters is in electrical engineering, dammit, not urban combat, and his criminal speciality was sneaky breaking and entering, not open brawls. So why he’s now trying to do both is a mystery to him, although his elderly neighbor from back when he was a kid was right that he’d come to a bad end.

Because, and he has no idea how he got here, he’s totally exposed in the middle of the biggest, openest part of Central Park imaginable. No cover, nowhere to hide, and thanks to overusing it, the charge in the suit is flat so he can’t even shrink. His breath is sawing in his lungs like he’s an asthmatic in gym class, and as soon as the aliens get around the corner he’s a dead man.

He spins around to face them, because why the hell not, and waits for the end.

Screeching and chittering, three of them come into view, and that’s the exact moment a massive gust of wind blows through the park, so hard Scott’s knocked off his feet. The clouds open up and the sun blazes down like it’s August - which it very much isn’t - and the wind lifts the branches of a tree so the light goes straight in the bug-lizard-things’ faces.

They scream and cover their eyes, trying to scan the park but clearly unable to deal with that much sun. All Scott can do from his position prone on the ground is gape as they squint right over him before retreating.

Wow. _Wow_. The Avengers are never going to believe this. He’s not sure he believes it himself.

“Jesus Christ, that was lucky.”

_“It’s Loki,” Loki scowls. “Get it right, or next time you’re food.”_

~

**Scarlet Witch**

She’s not sure how much longer she can hold them back. Wanda’s never used her powers like this before. When Ultron and his robots hit, the worst of it was over in less than an hour, it went so quickly. And all Hydra’s experiments were terrible but limited; they were too afraid to break one of their only two successes. But this has gone on, and on, and on, and it just won’t stop.

She’s guarding the others as they try to give people enough time to evacuate. The buildings around Wanda are still full of people, she can feel them, and she’s trying to shield them as well as the street behind her. But the shots are relentless, and she’s too weak to throw a barrier in front of everything, so she’s blocking one shot at a time, as fast as they’re coming. It’s draining her mental strength instead, tracking everything coming towards her, stopping and deflecting each and every one-

Everything goes slow as Wanda bats away a grenade and it sails towards one of the buildings full of people. All she can see is the hospital in Lagos all over again, _nonono please no-_

Magic, not hers and not Strange’s either, flares around the grenade. It explodes short, fire washing over the glass but not breaking through, and Wanda wants to scream in relief.

Something _green_ speaks inside her head.

_“You’re better than this, witch. Your power matches everyone on this field and masters most of them. Act like it!”_

She gasps, head spinning, and forces the voice out before she can think about _what_ it said.

Because it was right.

She stands back up. Somehow no time has passed since she hit the last grenade away, and nothing has slipped past her.

She spins out a shield again. This time, instead of protecting the entire street and the buildings either side, she turns it the other way and traps the attackers inside it.

Then brings it in.

Smaller and smaller, and stronger and stronger. She’s still putting the same amount of energy into it, but every second it has less space to cover. The aliens are shrieking, trying to push back, but there is no stopping her. Behind her, the surge of people is lessening as the evacuation clears out.

There’s not much space left inside the bubble now. The aliens are climbing on top of each other, trying to escape the walls closing in. Wanda takes a deep breath, and shuts her eyes.

Crushes the shield down to a single point all at once.

_Loki huffs. “Told you so.”_

~

**Iron Man**

Tony’s being going for hours and they’re barely making a dent in the alien tide. Him and the gang, and Steve’s gang, and the new gang, are throwing everything they have - or at least Tony hopes so, or he’s going to be having _words_ with the jerk holding back - and they’re holding on by the tips of their fingers.

But they’re still doing it, if they can just keep going until reinforcements get here-

“Oh _shit!_ ” Tony dodges an incoming missile that slipped past Falcon, but that flings him into the path of another one that impacts his right boot. He starts spiraling down instantly, backups trying to compensate but doing a frankly shitty job, if he survives this he’s going to do something about the redundancies-

Another stabilizer fries itself and now he’s completely lopsided, shooting sideways and right towards-

Well, fuck.

Right towards another bloody space portal that who knows where it’s going to take him.

And there’s sweet fuck-all he can do about it, because he’s already gone through it.

Tony lands in a shallow stretch of water that cushions his fall enough to not kill him, and drags himself up onto land as soon as his limbs are functioning enough to allow it. “FRIDAY?”

_“Good news and bad news, boss. We’ve only moved twelve miles, but there’s something you need to know about_.”

Tony blinks until the HUD comes back into focus, and tries to spit out four different swear words simultaneously.

Because while the Avengers have been calling in the military for backup, the aliens have been doing the exact same thing. Tony’s staring right at a second force, surging towards the main battle, and they’re going to hit the Avengers’ line in the back.

And _nobody_ knows it’s coming.

“Rhodey,” he croaks, “where’s the fucking Air Force?”

_“We’re thirty seconds out, what do you need?_ ”

“I’m twelve miles east of the target zone, I need a strike on the aliens’ fucking backup plan!”

“ _Oh, crap, I- okay, we’re overflying the front and coming up from the west. Get to cover, this is gonna be hot._ ”

Tony sets the armor to the highest protection setting, the one he almost never uses because the extra plates fuck up his movement. Safely cocooned, he watches the jets streak across the sky and bomb the shit out of the field of aliens in front of him.

He does _not_ want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t gone through that portal. Between the small size of it in a big sky and the damage to the suit, it’s a miracle he ended up here.

Huh. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume a certain dead god of mischief had something to do with that,” Tony says. “You are rocking the whole _struck down, returned more powerful than you can possibly imagine_ thing, Obi-Wan. Guess now I owe you two drinks.”

_Loki smiles smugly. “About time I got some credit around here._ ”

~

**Nebula**

She is not ready - not _willing_ \- to die before killing Thanos, but staring down the gun of some _minion_ while her own gun has clicked dry, Nebula doesn’t have much of a choice.

She settles her weight back into her heels. “Alright, let’s get it over with.”

Nebula bares her teeth and the other creature chitters glee, and pulls the trigger.

Her head turns to the side - she’d meant to stand unflinching, but something in her wouldn’t allow it - and then her temple burns with a bright stab of pain.

The creature shrieks and something hits the ground.

One heartbeat, two. Nebula, still alive, looks back around.

The creature is lying dead with a hole in its head, and there’s a sluggish wet path making it’s way down Nebula’s cheek. She probes the wound and feels the metal bone beneath the synthetic flesh, feels a tiny nick in it where the bullet bounced straight off and into the creature’s skull.

Looks like Thanos has good reason to regret every piece of her he cut off and replaced.

Nebula snatches up the creature’s gun from its hand, spits on the corpse, and runs on.

_“Go, sister,” Loki murmurs. “Kill your father. May it bring you more joy than it did me.”_

~

**Hawkeye**

You wouldn’t know from looking at the farm that the world almost ended a week ago.

Cooper and Lila are off in the woods somewhere, Lila dragging Coop along to see a bird’s nest she found. Laura’s in the house fighting with the broken fridge, and last Clint saw, the fridge was winning. Nathaniel’s on one of his ‘nothing but being carried by Papa is tolerable’ kicks, and is currently perched on Clint’s hip pretending to read a cardboard book.

All of which adds up to this being the best chance Clint is going to have for nobody to know what he’s up to. Nobody old enough to understand it, anyway.

Clint sighs, still kind of bemused at himself, tightens his arm around his miraculously alive little boy, and gets this over with.

“Alright, Loki - I don’t know if you can hear me, but you’d better be listening because I’m only going to say this once. I’m not forgiving you for what you did to me, or Coulson, or New York, any of it. But nobody made you fight the giant purple grape to the death, and nobody made you help us _after_ you died, so. Thanks. We’re even.”

Clint flicks the lighter and sets the offering pile alight. He’s bastardized a few Viking legends and traditions, and balanced on a stack of wood and kindling are a SEAL-issue knife, a small bowl filled with Clint’s blood, and a printout of the top fifty posts on Reddit. They seemed like the sorts of things Loki would appreciate.

“But if you’re still listening, here’s the thing. I don’t want to see any funny stuff going on, now that the big guy’s dead. Because I guarantee you, we’ll find a way to get rid of you if we have to. I know some girls who could bust your ghostly ass without breaking a sweat. So rest in peace, or else.”

_Loki grins. “Challenge accepted.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by [Apples](http://appleslostherpassword.tumblr.com/) and [Haldane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Haldane/pseuds/Haldane). Thanks, guys!
> 
> My tumblr is [here](http://ao3-arkada.tumblr.com/) if you're interested in that sort of thing.


End file.
